VOL. XLVI, No. 5
1
COPYRIGHT.1924. BY NATIONALGEOGRAPHICSOCIETY.WASHINGTON D. C ., IN THE UNITEDSTATES AND GREAT BRITAIN
BANISHING THE DEVIL OF DISEASE AMONG
THE NASHI
Weird Ceremonies Performed by an Aboriginal Tribe
in the Heart of Yunnan Province, China
BY JOSEPH F. ROCK
LEADER OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY'S YINNAN PROVINCE EXPEDITION, AUTHOR OF "HUNTING
TILE C(i'IIAMUOGRA TREE,"
IN TIE NATIONAL CEOGRAPII C MAGAZINE
lI'ith Illustrations from Photographs by the Author
A ONG deep canyons and on the
slopes of hoary ranges reaching
heights of 20,000 feet and more,
at the western gateway from China into
Tibet, lives an aboriginal tribe called
Moso by the Chinese.
Far removed
from the influence of northern and east
ern Chinese civilization, the \loso have
lived secluded, shut off from the rest of
the world, and only coming into contact
with other tribes inferior to themselves,
with the possible exception of the Tibet
ans.
While the latter have adopted Bud
dhism, which with them has degenerated
into demonolatry, the Moso, or Nashi, as
they call themselves, have adhered to
their aboriginal religion of sorcery, which
undoubtedly must once have prevailed in
Tibet, ere it was crowded out by the pow
erful Lama church. The Nashi, as we
shall henceforth call them, now a dwin
dling tribe of Tibeto-Burman stock, many
centuries ago were a powerful people,
under a king who had his capital at
Yigku, the present prefectural city of
Likiang, in the Chinese province of
Yiinnan (see map, page 478).
As the castles were the strongholds of
the knightly clans of the Middle Ages
in Europe, so we may look upon the
great snow range in the center of the
Nashi Kingdom as the cradle and rally
ing point of a gradually vanishing tribe.
Dragonlike, this mighty range, pierced
by the Yangtze as by a giant's sword,
extends toward the borders of Szechwan,
crowned by three peaks whose turrets
know eternal winter only. On the slopes
and miniature plains-ice lakes in bygone
days-are scattered the hamlets of the
Nashi, living happily, as if in the Stone
Age, for flint and edelweiss as tinder
still take the place of matches, and pine
wood torches are used instead of lamps.
NASII FIRST FIGURED IN HISTORY IN
796 A. D.
Purely an agricultural people, the
Nashi eke out a precarious existence.
They are first definitely mentioned in the
annals of the Tang dynasty about 796
A. D.,
but vague reference is made in
the Chinese books of the sixteenth
century before our era to a tribe which
appeared on the western border of China,
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NOVEMBER, 1924
WASHINGTON
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